There wasn't a single moment where things changed.
No clear beginning. No declaration. No line crossed that couldn't be uncrossed.
It happened the way most important things in our lives had so far—gradually, without asking for permission.
Second semester arrived without ceremony. Classes shifted. Schedules changed just enough to feel new again. The campus looked the same, but the air felt different—warmer, fuller, as if the year had decided to move forward all at once.
We started spending evenings together more often.
Not because we planned to. Because it felt strange not to.
Sometimes we studied. Sometimes we didn't. Sometimes we just sat somewhere quiet, watching the light change, talking about nothing that would matter later and everything that did now.
One evening, we ended up back at the river.
It wasn't intentional. We had taken the train halfway, missed our stop without noticing, and laughed when we realized where we were.
"This feels familiar," she said as we walked toward the bridge.
"Yeah."
We leaned against the railing, watching the water move beneath us. The river looked different in summer—slower, heavier, reflecting more sky than it knew what to do with.
"Do you remember the last time we were here?" she asked.
"I do."
She didn't say anything else, but she didn't need to. The memory sat between us, unspoken but intact.
We stayed longer than we meant to.
When we finally sat down on the concrete edge, our shoulders brushed naturally. Neither of us moved away.
"I've been thinking," she said quietly.
I waited.
"About us," she added, as if clarifying something obvious.
I looked at her then. Really looked. The way her hair caught the fading light. The way she wasn't smiling, but wasn't tense either.
"So have I," I said.
She nodded. "I thought you had."
We didn't rush after that.
We talked instead.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
She told me she'd been afraid of ruining what we had by naming it. That she liked how easy things had become, how safe. That part of her worried that once we stepped into something clearer, it would start asking things of us we couldn't promise.
I told her I'd been afraid of the opposite—that if we didn't say anything, we'd wake up one day and realize we'd drifted again without meaning to.
We laughed quietly at how similar our fears sounded.
"You always think too far ahead," she said.
"And you avoid thinking about it at all," I replied.
"Balance," she said, smiling.
When she reached for my hand, it wasn't dramatic.
Her fingers touched mine, tentative for half a second, then settled as if they'd always known where they belonged.
Nothing about it felt sudden.
It felt overdue.
From then on, things shifted—not drastically, but unmistakably.
We walked closer.
Sat closer.
Waited for each other without pretending we weren't.
There was no announcement. No label exchanged out loud. But the way she leaned into me when she laughed, the way I reached for her instinctively when crossing the street—those things didn't need explanation.
We became careful in a new way.
Not distant.
Considerate.
I noticed it in the way she watched my face when she talked about the future now. In the way I chose my words more deliberately, aware that they landed somewhere they hadn't before.
Happiness arrived quietly.
It showed up in shared meals, eaten slowly. In inside jokes no one else would understand. In the comfort of knowing exactly where to find each other at the end of the day.
One afternoon, while sitting under the shade of a tree near campus, she rested her head against my shoulder.
"Does this feel real to you?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, without hesitation.
She smiled, eyes closed. "Good."
There were moments, though—small ones—when I felt something else beneath the warmth.
A thin layer of awareness.
How carefully we were holding this.
How easily it could be affected by things outside the moment.
Sometimes, when she spoke about classes she wanted to take next year, or opportunities she'd heard about, I caught myself listening too closely, measuring distance without meaning to.
Sometimes, when I talked about plans I hadn't fully decided on, she went quiet—not withdrawing, just thoughtful, like she was placing my words somewhere she could return to later.
Neither of us mentioned it.
We were happy.
That felt important enough to protect.
One evening, as we walked back from campus under streetlights that had begun to feel familiar, she stopped suddenly.
"Hey," she said.
I turned to her. "What?"
She hesitated, then shook her head. "Nothing. Just… stay."
I did.
She slipped her hand into mine again, firmer this time.
In that moment, I believed—quietly, without argument—that we had found something solid. That this time, the distance wouldn't sneak up on us. That we were old enough now, aware enough, to notice change before it became loss.
The thought felt comforting.
It also felt dangerous.
Because happiness, once acknowledged, becomes something you're afraid of losing.
And as the semester continued, as days stacked neatly on top of each other, I couldn't shake the feeling that this—this closeness, this warmth—was not the end of the story.
It was the part we would one day look back on and wonder how we hadn't seen what was coming.